I. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to harvesters for tobacco or other leaf crop plants. More particularly, the invention relates to harvesters of the riding type which carry workers (known as primers) who remove the leaves from the plants.
II. Discussion of the Prior Art
Fully automatic tobacco harvesters have been developed in recent years and the tobacco harvesting and curing process has been modified to accommodate the increased yields that have consequently been obtained. In particular, automatic harvesters carry large collection bins for the leaves and the curing kilns have been designed to accept such bins.
Despite this, it has been found that fully automatic harvesters are not entirely satisfactory. Although they improve yields, they cannot be as selective in leaf choice as a human primer and often damage the plants and leaves. There is therefore a need to return to the riding type of machine previously employed, but the efficiency of such machines is generally too low to make them compatible with the large bin techniques developed for the automatic harvesters.
Examples of the known riding type harvesters are disclosed in the following U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,107,018 issued on Oct. 15, 1963 to W. A. Mish, Jr.; 3,215,288 issued on Nov. 2, 1965 to W. R. Long, et. al.; 3,258,141 issued on Jun. 28, 1966 to W. E. Davis; 3,453,018 issued on Jul. 1, 1969 to J. D. Love et. al.; and 4,066,176 issued on Jan. 3, 1978 to Bass Honeycutt. An example of an automatic harvester is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,834,137 issued on Sept. 10, 1974 to W. R. Long.